AI Can Almost Do A "FIXME"... We're Cooked

The mountain of web development gets steeper with each framework. HTML? Just a gentle slope. CSS? A bit more challenging. Bootstrap? Now we're cruising downhill! But then comes React Native and suddenly you're falling off a cliff. That moment when you think you've mastered frontend development only to have React Native remind you that cross-platform mobile dev is where dreams go to die. Ten years of experience and I'm still googling "why is my flexbox not working on Android but fine on iOS."

The duality of tech content platforms in their natural habitat! On the left: "Stop Using React" with a modest 46 upvotes. On the right: "Just F***ing Use React" with a whopping 170 upvotes. Welcome to frontend development, where contradictory advice gets served up daily like it's a special at your local coffee shop. The algorithm knows what it's doing - feeding you completely opposite opinions so you can stay perpetually confused and keep coming back for more validation. The best part? Both articles probably make equally compelling arguments. Truly the Schrödinger's cat of web frameworks - React is simultaneously the best and worst thing ever created until you actually open the article.

Remember when landing a job meant you could copy-paste a Bootstrap form and call an API? Those were simpler times. Now you need to build your own weather API from scratch, write a custom JavaScript framework (because apparently we don't have enough), manipulate the DOM like a surgeon, integrate an LLM to make weather reports match the user's emotional state, and probably solve world hunger while you're at it. The punchline hits hard: React developers went from being unicorns to being so common that even your barber is discussing getDerivedStateFromProps over a fade. The bar for "junior" positions has basically become "build me the next Facebook but make it personal." Job requirements have inflated faster than a crypto bubble, and now everyone's expected to be a full-stack, AI-integrating, framework-building wizard just to get an entry-level gig. Good luck out there, freshers.

Okay but here's the thing: trying vanilla JavaScript in 2024 is like playing Dark Souls with a wooden spoon. Sure, you'll appreciate why libraries exist, but you'll also lose your sanity in the process. The gaming analogy hits different for developers because we literally do this with frameworks. "Why do we need React?" *proceeds to manually manipulate DOM for 6 hours* "Oh... OH." Same energy as "Why do we need jQuery?" back in 2010 when cross-browser compatibility was a war crime. But let's be real—sometimes vanilla is actually better. You don't need a 500KB framework to toggle a class name. The problem is juniors who've never written a single line without create-react-app and think `document.getElementById` is ancient hieroglyphics. Then they ship 2MB of dependencies for a todo app. The real wisdom? Understand the vanilla mechanics so you know when you're over-engineering. Otherwise you're just cargo-culting npm packages and praying to the node_modules gods.

Just another Tuesday, paddling through the 1.3 million packages on NPM, hoping to find that magical dependency that won't introduce 300 vulnerabilities or break your entire project next week. The search continues through the endless sea of abandoned projects, cryptominers, and that one package with decent documentation but hasn't been updated since 2017. Keep rowing.

Oh. My. God. The absolute DRAMA of JavaScript developers! 🙄 Instead of writing a simple function themselves, they'll drag in 47 BAJILLION npm packages like SpongeBob hauling that ridiculous mountain of presents! Why write 10 lines of code when you can install an entire ecosystem with 9,427 dependencies that'll break in six months? The shopping cart is literally SCREAMING under the weight of all those unnecessary packages! Meanwhile, the function they needed could've been written faster than it takes to type "npm install massive-overkill-package-for-simple-task"! It's the developer equivalent of buying an entire Home Depot to hang a single picture frame!